Trump Campaign Collusion with Russia in its Interference in the 2016 US Presidential Election

Wikileaks and Julian Assange

On February 18, 2010, Wikileaks leaked their first US State Department diplomatic “cable” message, provided to them by US Army Private Chelsea Manning (then known as Bradley Manning). Although Manning was arrested in June 2010, by this time she had leaked several documents and files to Wikileaks, including about 260,000 diplomatic cables. On November 28, 2010, along with several major newspapers, Wikileaks coordinated a broad publication of selected diplomatic cables from this leak. The cables continued to leak slowly over the next year, until the entirety of the leaked cables became publicly available on September 1, 2011. Wiki

On June 12, 2016, during an interview on British television station ITV, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange publicly announced plans to publish stolen emails relating to Hillary Clinton. Source In the interview, Assange stated that he opposed Clinton’s candidacy and also considered her a personal enemy, believing that she had advocated for his prosecution for the leak of the diplomatic cables. Source

Based on the timing of this announcement, it circumstantially appears that this may have been among the subject matter discussed at Trump Tower on June 9.

On July 4, 2016, Wikileaks posted a link on Twitter to over 1000 emails from Hillary Clinton’s personal server, which had previously been released by the US State Department. Wikileaks had selected a subset of the released emails for their relevance to the Iraq war. Source

On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks published a collection of about 20,000 leaked DNC emails and about 8,000 DNC files in the first of a series of such leaks. Source

On July 25, 2016, in an interview on news program Democracy Now!, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange stated that he had timed the release of the stolen DNC emails to coincide with the 2016 Democratic National Convention for greatest impact. Source

On July 26, 2016, widespread news reports stated that US intelligence officials concluded with high confidence that Russia was behind the DNC hacks and Wikileaks publication of DNC emails. Source

From July–October 2016, Wikileaks continued to serially publish leaked emails from the DNC, John Podesta, and others. Source

On September 20-21, 2016, Donald Trump, Jr. communicated with Wikileaks over private, direct messages on Twitter. Wikileaks shared a password it had discovered for a new anti-Trump PAC’s website. Trump Jr. responded that he would look into it. Source

On October 3, 2016, further private, direct messages over Twitter between Donald Trump Jr. and the Wikileaks Twitter account discussed giving extra publicity to a story published on the conspiracy website TruePundit making an apparently false claim that Hillary Clinton had suggested ‘droning’ Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Trump Jr. also asked about rumors he had been hearing of another pending leak about Clinton, which Trump’s friend Roger Stone had just mentioned on Twitter. Source

On October 7, 2016, Wikileaks began a series of leaks of emails stolen from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta. The leaked emails included correspondence with Hillary Clinton, including drafts of the text of several private speeches Clinton had made to banks. Source

On October 10, 2016, Sputnik, a Russian government-controlled news agency, published an article including a falsified version of a hacked email from Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal. The doctored email falsely showed Blumenthal was critical of Clinton’s handling of the Benghazi embassy incident. Only hours after the article appeared on Sputnik, at a campaign rally in Wilkes-Barre, PA, Donald Trump produced a document that he incorrectly implied that he had received from Wikileaks, stating, “This just came out. Wikileaks, I love Wikileaks!” Trump then read quotes from the falsified Sputnik version of the leaked email to “prove” that Clinton lied about a recent incident at the US embassy in Benghazi, resulting in chants of “lock her up.” Source1Source2

On October 11, 2016, Donald Trump posted to Twitter encouraging his followers to look at the Clinton emails published by Wikileaks.

I hope people are looking at the disgraceful behavior of Hillary Clinton as exposed by WikiLeaks. She is unfit to run.

On October 12, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. received another private, direct message from the Wikileaks Twitter account. This message requested Trump campaign help promoting the leaks, and gave a link to a Wikileaks website they hoped the campaign would publicize. Source About an hour later, Donald Trump promoted Wikileaks on Twitter:

Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!

On October 21, 2016, the Wikileaks Twitter account sent a private, direct message to Donald Trump Jr. requesting that the Trump campaign give them one or more of Trump’s tax returns, or any other “negative stuff” they thought might get released to the public anyway, so that Wikileaks could ‘leak’ it to the public. They explained that the leak would help both the Trump campaign and Wikileaks, making them appear more impartial to the public. “That means that the vast amount of stuff that we are publishing on Clinton will have much higher impact, because it won’t be perceived as coming from a ‘pro-Trump’ ‘pro-Russia’ source, which the Clinton campaign is constantly slandering us with.” Source

Odd that Wikileaks thinks the Clinton campaign calling them “pro-Trump” is slanderous, in the same message where they’re collaborating with Trump Jr. to help the Trump campaign.

On November 8, 2016 (election day), the Wikileaks Twitter account again sent Donald Trump Jr. a private message suggesting that, if Trump were to lose the election, he should not concede, and instead should claim the election was rigged. After it became clear that Trump had won the election, the account messaged Trump Jr. again, stating, “Wow.” Source

On December 16, 2016, the Wikileaks Twitter account again privately messaged Donald Trump Jr. to request that Donald Trump ask Australia to appoint Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, an Australian citizen, as ambassador to the US. Source

Assange asked for a quid pro quo, in exchange for his assistance to the Trump campaign.

On July 11, 2017, the Wikileaks Twitter account again privately messaged Donald Trump Jr. to request that he provide to them a copy of his emails that were being discussed in recent articles in the New York Times, in relation to Don Jr.’s Trump Tower meeting with Russian agents to discuss Russia’s offer to deliver to the Trump campaign intelligence damaging to the Clinton campaign. It was claimed that ‘leaking’ the emails in this way would deprive Trump’s “enemies” in the press of the ability to portray the Trump Tower meeting unfavorably, and that it would also be “beautifully confounding.” Source

Hours after receiving this message, Donald Trump Jr. posted the emails himself on his own Twitter feed.

Steele Dossier

Russia was behind the leak of DNC emails to Wikileaks. Further, leaks of DNC emails to Wikileaks were conducted with the full knowledge and support of Trump and senior members of his campaign team.

Carter Page and others within the Trump campaign devised and promoted a strategy of leaking hacked emails to WikiLeaks in order to swing Bernie Sanders supporters from Clinton to Trump, leveraging their apparent “visceral dislike” of Hillary Clinton.

Comments/Corroboration of Steele Dossier

Regarding Russia being behind the leak of DNC emails to Wikileaks, this has been confirmed. Crowdstrike, Fidelis Cybersecurity, Mandiant, SecureWorks, and ThreatConnect agreed that Russia was behind the leak of DNC emails to Wikileaks. Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Further, a DNI report (PDF) said US intelligence agreed with “high confidence,” and that Vladimir Putin directed the effort. US Intelligence said that Russia’s intentions with the email leaks were to help Trump. Source

In April 2016, before it was publicly known that the DNC and John Podesta’s emails had been hacked, a professor with close ties to the Russian government told George Papadopoulos, an adviser to the Trump campaign, that Russia had ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton: namely, “thousands of emails.” Several senior Trump campaign officials knew about Papadopoulos’s interactions with the Russians. Source

On June 3–9, 2016, senior Trump campaign officials met a Russian attorney and others at Trump Tower to discuss an offer from the Russian government to deliver to the Trump campaign official documents and information that would allegedly incriminate Clinton. On June 7, 2016, in a speech in New Jersey, Donald Trump announced plans to give “a major speech on probably Monday of next week [6/13] and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons… I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting.” Source

On June 12, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange publicly announced plans to publish stolen emails relating to Hillary Clinton; then on June 15, Guccifer 2.0 leaked its first set of documents stolen from the DNC. The timing of these activities, so soon after the Trump campaign discussed Russia’s offer to help them attack Clinton, raises the question whether these leaks were discussed at Trump Tower. In addition, Donald Trump’s hints in his campaign speeches during this time further suggest that he had direct knowledge about the forthcoming leaks.

On October 26, 2016, on Fox Television, Rudy Giuliani joked about a big surprise coming up in the next couple of days that would turn around the election for Trump. Source Two days later, on October 28, 2016, FBI Director James Comey said that emails “pertinent” to the investigation, closed months earlier, into Hillary Clinton’s private email server had been discovered in an unrelated case on a computer belonging to Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Clinton campaign aide Huma Abedin. Comey’s announcement gained widespread news coverage in the final days before the election, and had a significant pro-Trump impact in polls. Source

Stone and Giuliani clearly had foreknowledge about these imminent surprises that damaged the Clinton campaign.